GRMC adopts tax rate, budget for fiscal year 2020

The Graham Hospital District adopted the effective tax rate and  a fiscal year 2020 budget in their Tuesday board meeting.

GRMC CEO Shane Kernell said the total tax base is set to rise from $824,747,159 last year to $851,949,768 with about $25 million of the increase being new property added. The increase allowed for the effective rate, the rate needed to raise similar tax dollars as the year before, to decrease to $0.395206 per $100 valuation from this year’s rate of $0.399567.

“The effective rate of $.0395206 will produce $3,366,000,” Kernell said. “(It’s) essentially the same dollars from last year plus about another $100,000 because of the $25 million in new value.”

Board Member Doctor Donald Behr asked if the hospital was in the position to lower the tax rate even more than the effective.

“I think that’s a great question and one that needs to be asked,” Kernell responded. “The (answer) would be not this year, not with advent of adding new services to the hospital such as cardiovascular imaging, we have added an additional surgeon, we have went to a different ER group that costs more money. This year would not be the year we would advocate for lowering taxes. I think it is all great that we have done a good job here at the board level and administration to make the dollars work for keeping the tax rate at the effective rate.”

The board approved the adoption of the effective rate by a 5-0 vote with members Sylvia Overton and Suzy Graham not in attendance.

The adoption of the effective rate means a property valued at $100,000 will see a decrease of $4.36 in taxes for the next year.

Budget

After approval of the tax rate, GRMC CFO Jeff Casbeer presented the fiscal year 2020 budget.

The CFO began by discussing some of the things the hospital has been able to accomplish over the last four years including the addition of services, lowering of expenses, renegotiating commercial insurance agreements and refinancing the revenue bond.

The budget provided shows the hospital will have a net operating revenue of $18,711,852 with expenses of $20,385,935 and additional expenses of $1,805,970 in interest, depreciation and amortization. This means before taxes and other revenue the hospital is budgeted a loss of $3,480,053.

The addition of a budgeted $3,312,458 in tax revenue and $308,082 in other revenue, such as donations, tobacco money and trauma care funds brings the total budgeted bottom line to a net income of $140,497.

“This year like last year, we are banking a lot of our growth on our clinics,” Casbeer said. “We have talked about adding Dr. (Audrey) Kennedy budgeted to start in January in Young County Family Clinic. Doctor (Steven) Vaughan we have already recruited, so we will have a full 12 months of economic impact from him. Then we have some great initiatives in the orthopedic clinic as well, we think that is going to add $1,115,000 to the bottom line for net revenue.”

Other areas he said he expects growth in revenue from include the new cardiovascular imaging services with an additional $484,000. He said he also expects some inpatient and outpatient growth based on the additions of doctors Jared Mataska, Vaughan and Kennedy.

For the rest of the story, see the Saturday, Sept. 21 edition of The Graham Leader.